Phantom Noire experiment
by Lachivo
Summary: This is a genre experiment, where I try to make the Danny Phatom setting work with an unusual writing style. I have been reading a lot of crime novels lately, and it got me wondering how the characters would hold up to a crime novel kind of setting.


The night was heavy with rain. Dense, gray curtains washed down onto the pavement of Anarcle Road, glossy and reflective in the wetness. Streetlights cast long, bright trails onto the puddles on the abandoned alley. On both sides, squarish brick housings rose, none of them more then four or five stories high. They looked so commonplace in Amity Park that this street could have been any of the less wealthy streets in town, all inhabited by common people with common interests, and common attitudes towards things like the current weather: stay indoors.

Some, however, were not so lucky as to be a member of the exclusive common-folk crowd.

Danny trudged down the dark street with deliberate slowness. He had no rush, he was already soaked to the bone. Even with his suit being somewhat water proof, a full night of this kind of downpour had gotten the better of it, so since it made no difference, he had changed to his human clothes and landed. Also, the wind was picking up. The cold rain felt like whiplashes to the face at those speeds.

He looked up at the dark sky with a frown. Was it ever going to stop? It had been raining for days, bringing his mood down a little. He absentmindedly glanced to both sides to scan for any danger, making the routine checks of rooftops, street bends and the telltale sound of screaming and destruction, but nothing caught his attention, save for a family inside one of the windows he passed; a man, a woman and two kids, sitting around a table eating dinner. Might have been his own. The warm glow from the kitchen bore a depressing contrast to his own surroundings, but he did not let it get to him. It was not like this was the first time he had done this, nor the first time he had wished himself at home rather than here. He suddenly started to notice how cold he was, not that that usually bothered him either. He assumed it had something to do with mental hardening, as his overbearing profiling-prone sister would have put it.

Constant ghost attacks had left him a capable fighter with a habitual healthy paranoia, a tolerance for pain that was somewhat disturbing, and some uncanny reflexes for a kid his age. Last night, his mom had tossed him a bag of potato chips while he was off guard. As a result, chips had been scattered all over the living room. After the initial adrenalin boost had worn off, he had tried to put together some lame excuse about school wearing on him, his sister nagging on him and dad messing up his scooter to make some kind of new ghost trap. He had even blamed the weather, although this had lacked enthusiasm somewhat.

He was not quite sure if she had bought it, but she had let him off the hook with only a worried glance. Danny hated that look. He tried to ignore it as often as possible, but he knew that she could tell that something was not right. She was not blind, he knew that. There was just something metaphorically in front of her eyes all the time. Usually a new ghost weapon, or a schematic for a portal modification.

In her defense, his story _had_ been bogus. School was going on like always, and Dash had even stayed off of him for weeks for some unknown reason. His sister had been a big help after she had found out about his powers: she covered for him when she could, she talked to him when he let her, and she even drove them around town sometimes when Tucker, Sam and he had a haunting to investigate or a ghost attack to stop. His dad had actually put his scooter back together again after borrowing the gearbox. Truth be told, the weather excuse was probably the truest of them all.

He made a mental note to thank Jazz once he came home. She had been putting up with a lot these last couple of weeks. About a week ago she had driven them back to Fentonworks after a ghost attack had left Danny beaten to a pulp, and Tucker with a black eye and a mild concussion. She had put up a brave face, but had blown at least three red lights heading home, and did not leave Danny's bedside for the entire night. When Danny had woken up the next day, he was perfectly fine, like always. Jazz had been dumbstruck. Danny had tried to explain it to her, but he could tell that she did not really pay attention. Instead, he had focused her on getting their stories straight for their parents, just in case.

Whatever wounds he got as a ghost would always heal up completely after a while, so with good night's sleep he was usually fine. It was something about his ectometabolism, or whatever. All he knew was, that of all the ghost fights he had been in, he did not have a single scar. It left him wondering sometimes if the battles had even been real, if it was all something he had dreamed. He usually found his trusty thermos right about then. At least that did not disappear over night.

Tucker had caught him sleeping with it once. He had teased him with it for days.

Tucker had found out about the house Danny was headed for a while back, but they had not gotten around to doing anything about it until now. When he had left Tucker's, Tucker had mentioned something about the address popping up in weird places, like the origin point of ghost attacks, domestic disturbance cases, obituaries, and even health code violation cases. Tucker had started reading the newspapers more, and as such, he got whiff of some interesting things now and then.

The house itself was never mentioned specifically; it was always the house next to it, across the street from it, someone who used to live in it but had now moved, and so on. Sam had been very excited, and had come up with several theories, the most likely being a natural ghost portal, that let lesser ghosts into the human world on a regular basis. It needed to be closed as soon as possible, although ghost fights, schoolwork, family and r&r had left it almost a month postponed.

Danny sneezed. He was picking up a cold.

He stopped outside the house in question, and looked at the wet little brazen sign that somewhat pathetically revealed its identity: 201. Registered to Damien and Greta Foster, according to Tucker and a dirty sign on the front door, also brass. They had, by all accounts, abandoned it years ago. Danny Fenton sighed deeply, barely noticeable over the increasing wind. He hated that he had to do this alone, but Tucker had been forced to stay at home due to an immediate family emergency (his aunt from Albuquerque was visiting), and Sam had conveniently dropped off the planet. She did not answer her phone, and she had been offline all evening. He had to worry if something was up, or some ghost had gotten to her. Or maybe Vlad. The worst-case scenarios had been lining up in the back of his mind for hours, but he had dismissed them all as paranoia. He trusted her to know how to handle any situation he could imagine. That thought made him smile. If anyone, Sam could hold her own in a fight.

His contemplations were cut short, however, when he saw what he recognized to be a flashlight inside one of the windows. He arched a brow. There were people in there?

For a moment he wondered if it was just a flash from a passing car somewhere, or the weather playing with him. But then the light came again, this time for a little longer. He pondered it for a moment, but then figured that it was probably just a ghost messing around with some old stuff that the Fosters had left behind.

He made himself invisible and walked straight through the door, out of the rain and into a very old, very dusty and very quiet house. There was a thick layer of gray dust on everything, and the streetlights from outside, bent through the wet window, made strange shapes in the little puffy clouds of disturbed dust that floated around in the next room. The tapestry job was only half finished, and a lot of walls were still the same color as the doors and window frames, making it all sort of blend together in the dark. Danny listened, muscles tense in expectation. No sounds. Not even a squeak of a floorboard.

He had not really expected any, as it was, after all, ghosts he was dealing with, but a little noise from something like the natural gate or the ghost bumping into something would have done a lot to ease his tension. No such thing as a helpful ghost, he thought with a mental snicker, and flew through the next wall.

The kitchen he entered was surprisingly clean for an abandoned house. Sure, brown stains of something were slowly spreading in the sink, and the trash smelled like it had not been taken out since the house was inhabited last, but there was no spillage and no mold or sewage on the floor, so it was much better than the last abandoned place he had visited.

As interesting as the sink was, he decided to move into the next room, the living room apparently. It was as empty as the kitchen had been, but no less dusty. Danny held back a sneeze, and popped back into the visible spectrum for a moment. Ghosts rarely used their powers as efficiently as they potentially could; they were still bound by old habits, such as walking on stairs or going through doors. It would have been odd for the ghost to fly somewhere that a human would not have walked.

Danny scratched his hair. So where was it?

In a fit of perfect timing, he heard a small squeak, barely audible over the rain hitting the window. It made shivers run down Danny's spine, and he spun around with a grim expression on his face, ectoplasmic energy amassing in his palms within parts of seconds.

It had come from the kitchen he had just left, more specifically a small, brown door that he had missed completely. He slowly flew closer. He would not have noticed it it it was not for the foot marks in the dust that led from the entrance to here.

How had he missed those when he came in?

He swiftly made himself invisible again, and flew through the door, ending up in a stairway that led down to an old basement in dire need of renovation. Raw stone was peaking through the plywood that had been carelessly slapped onto the walls here and there, and the stone steps were very crude and lumpy. The lumpy stairs made a sharp turn left at the bottom, and a soft green light shone from the room. Ectoplasm, no doubt. But ghosts did not usually leave footprints.

Footprints were bad. Footprints meant that someone living was involved, and that always, always lead to headaches. Ghosts were, by their nature, not really schemers; they were usually more focused on filling their individual needs or making their egoism gland throb a little. When the living were involved, though, things got a little more hairy, and the ghosts were more often than not only part of a very elaborate, albeit harebrained plan.

Danny made himself invisible as a precaution, before taking a peak around the corner.

Inside a small cellar room, between shelves filled with glass after glass of pickles, was a dark, hunched form. He wore a large black sack with holes for arms that looked like it was made from either very stiff cloth, or very thick plastic. It hid his huge body, making him look almost like a big black dustbin with arms. He was talking along with some recorded voices on a ghetto blaster next to him, their words flowing together like a church full of prayers. The sound made Danny a little dizzy. He could only barely make out the man's face, as he wore some kind of high-teck goggles that looked, like he, completely misplaced in the small storage room, surrounded by old paint and conserved fruit. Danny snapped his head back, on the off chance that the guy could actually see him. He did not want to break his cover just yet.

In the middle of the room was, as Sam had predicted, the natural portal: a flickering green speck in the middle of the air. It was not too big yet, witch would go a long way to explaining why so few ghosts had so far utilized it to make their lives miserable.

The voices grew louder, and Danny could now make out a few of the words: it sounded like complete gibberish. One said "...I am trying to stay awake!..." while another barked "...Jump!..." over and over again. Yet another said something he could not make out about the weather, and another kept calling for some "teacher" in increasingly pleading tones. It gave Danny the creeps.

Then, as suddenly as it had appeared, the noise ended with a small click as the guy pressed pause on the ghetto blaster. Danny strained his ears to hear any sound, but all he heard was the dim pulsing sound of the portal.

Then suddenly: "... and so it came to pass that the Band locked the Wanderer in Sleep. We call upon you today to return to where you are needed, that you may..."

The man's voice was droning and slightly strained, like it was very difficult for him to talk and sound ominous at the same time. Danny held his breath, but as he leaned back onto the wall, one of the loose plates suddenly creaked. He snapped off it and mentally cursed as the guy interrupted himself, mumbled "someone's here" and walked quickly towards the stairway.

Danny immediately phased through a wall, into what he hoped was the safety of the dirt next to the room. He peeked through the bottom of a step on the stairs, to try to make out where the guy was.

"What the..." Danny mumbled.

He was gone.

He flew into the room and carefully materialized, eyes peering around from one side of the room to the other. The door back to the kitchen was still closed, and the stairway was too long and steep for the guy to be able to make it out that quickly without breaking a leg, especially wearing that sack. The only explanation was that he had jumped into the portal.

This is getting really weird, he thought. Even by my standards.

He considered briefly if he should fly after him. Humans would not last long in the Ghost Zone without some kind of ghostly protection. On the other hand, the guy looked like he knew what he was doing, whoever it was. Still, closing up the portal now would spell doom for him.

He sighed heavily, hoping to hell he had not been that stupid.

He was just about to leave when he heard a faint noise from somewhere behind him. He turned once again, plasma blasts at the ready. And once again, he noticed a door he had missed before.

What is it with this house? At least paint your doors a different color, or give them an obvious frame or something, he thought grudgingly, as he flew to the hatch-like door. He paused in front of it, watching his own shadow on the wall reflected in the green light from the portal behind him, and tried to come up with a descent battle strategy. Now that he had been made, he might as well just barge in and try to cause as much confusion as he could. With any luck, he would overpower the man before he had drawn any ghost weaponry.

So thought so done. He took a few steps back, and barred his teeth, readying ectoplasm in his palms, and then stormed forth, shoulder first. With a crash and a bang, the door was off its hinges and flew smack into the adjacent wall, quickly followed by Danny Phantom who illuminated the whole room in a second with an ectoplasmic flash.

The fowl smell hit him like a hammer. Danny looked around to try to get his bearings, blocking the horrible stench out best he could. It was a small room similar to the other one, and a little window at the top of one of the walls was slightly ajar. Danny paused. With any luck, he picked that way, and not the portal, Danny thought. He looked around the room with his lightbulb hand, going over a lot of broken bottles and crates, trying to make out what smelled so bad. He turned and looked to the last corner, where he finally saw it. His stomach involuntarily cramped, and he worked hard not to loose his lunch. It worked, for whatever reason, and he limited his responses to grimacing and averting his eyes.

Looks like the Fosters left a little gift behind.


End file.
